Sallie Bingham, the catalyst for the destruction of the Louisville Courier Journal, died in New Mexico. Here’s the report from Kentucky Lantern:

Sallie Bingham, whose family owned the Louisville Courier Journal for nearly seven decades before its 1986 sale made national headlines, has died in New Mexico. She was 88.

Bingham, who grew up in Louisville amid the wealth and influence of one of the nation’s most prominent newspaper families, had lived in Sante Fe, New Mexico, since 1991 where she continued her work as a writer, philanthropist and supporter of women’s causes.

Bingham died Wednesday at her home following a stroke, The New York Times  reported Thursday.

She was one of three children of Barry Bingham Sr. and his wife, Mary, who in 1986 shared in ownership of the family media empire that included The Courier-Journal, a morning newspaper, its afternoon affiliate, the Louisville Times, WHAS TV and radio stations and Standard Gravure, a printing company.

Bingham Sr.’s surprise announcement of the sale fractured the companies through sales to individual owners—the newspapers to current owner Gannet Co.—and the family, with Barry Bingham Jr.,, then publisher, calling the sale “a betrayal,” according to The New York Times.

But his sisters, Sallie Bingham and Eleanor Bingham were less critical.

Sallie Bingham called the sale  ”a positive thing for Louisville, Kentucky and the family”  and her sister said that it was ”a relief to get this very sad occasion past us,” according to The New York Times.

Keith Runyon, a former editorial page editor and book editor at the Courier Journal who retired in 2012, said Bingham’s network of connections in writing and publishing helped advance the quality of the newspapers’ book page.

“Sallie was one of the most gifted writers, discerning critics and disarming colleagues I’ve known in almost 60 years in journalism. I didn’t always agree with her judgments, but they always were provocative,” Runyon said in an email. “Under her direction, the book page was truly one of the best regional ones in the country, and she featured reviews by and about books by authors including Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason, Joy Bale Boone, John Filiatreau and Barbara Kingsolver.”

But Runyon said he disagreed with some of her views.

“I thought Sallie was wrong in saying that The Courier Journal was too conservative in the era prior to the sale, and I told her that. We were in fact national leaders in the promotion of women and minorities. But without question Sallie was a catalyst for the big change that came in 1986.”

Media watchers said Sallie Bingham’s criticism of her family’s management of the media companies — including over her removal from the board — and her proposed sale of her 15% share in the family-owned company, helped trigger the sale her father said was to end the family’s dispute over control.

I’ve witnessed the demise of three major newspapers, and in each case it was because very rich people decided they weren’t making enough money from their holdings. I was at the Washington Post when the Grahams sold it to Jeff Bezos for a paltry $250 million, which, as we see with Gannett’s purchase of the CJ decades earlier, represented the total freefall in the value of newspapers. Bezos was seen as a savior at the time, but with the departures of Marty Baron and Sally Buzbee, the news organization has become Wall Street Journal Lite, heavily influenced by cronies of Rupert Murdoch.

I was at the Wall Street Journal, when the Bancroft family decided their dividends weren’t big enough, and they sold it to Rupert for $5 billion, where it became Fox News Lite.

And I was at the Courier Journal when the Bingham children fought over their toy, and Barry Bingham Sr. got tired of their bickering and sold it to Gannett, which has made it a crumbling shell of what it used to be. This quote from the Lantern story shows how delusional Sally was:

Sallie Bingham called the sale  ”a positive thing for Louisville, Kentucky and the family.” 

No! It was a horrible thing for Louisville and Kentucky. It was a positive for the family who walked away with $300 million, a huge amount at the time for a regional newspaper, to soothe their fragile egos. But then, the very rich don’t care about the kind of damage they inflict on people who don’t have wealth.

The sale was unforgiveable. Barry Bingham Jr. was one of the first newspaper owners to recognize that computerization would be key to the development of news operations and had other ideas about the modernization of journalism. But childish squabbles, illustrated very well in this linked case study from PFBI Institute, resulted in a news organization in the mid-1980s with hundreds of dedicated and respected journalists being whittled down to a tiny news outlet of 42 today.

Sallie and her siblings (all in the family portrait at the top of this post) got their millions, and, given that Sallie died in New Mexico, it shows her “positive thing for Louisville” quote was bullshit, since she got as far away as she could from the disaster she created.